"Chasing Shadows" by Ken Hughes (2014)

The cover of this book is intriguing at first glance. It is a photo of President Lyndon Johnson in a White House elevator with President-Elect Richard Nixon on November 11, 1968, just days after Nixon won the Presidential election by the 2nd closest margin in the 20^th century; the first being John Kennedy’s victory over Nixon in the 1960 election. There is almost an irony to that alone.

The author mainly concerns himself with tying the Watergate Affair to the 1968 Presidential election, when Nixon basically sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks; talks which would have possibly cost him the election against Vice President Humphrey. Through back channel maneuvers with Anna Chennault; widow of the man who commanded the Flying Tigers during World War Two; Nixon was able to accomplish just that, narrowly winning the election in the bargain. That was in 1968; in 1972 he would win by a landslide.

The real surprise here is the role Lyndon Johnson played in defeating his own Vice President, whose aims and goals regarding Vietnam did not match the party position in reference to the bombing halt. Johnson wanted it pegged to the restoration of the DMZ; with which the Republicans agreed; while Humphrey and McCarthy wanted to stop the bombing without conditions in order to show “good faith” to the North Vietnamese.

Relying on thousands of hours of tape recordings at the Johnson Library and the Nixon Archives, the author paints an accurate picture of the political ambitions which got us into the war in the first place, and then kept us there far longer than was necessary. There were no “clean hands” in the bunch. The Republicans and Democrats were both focused on politics rather than what was right. These tapes prove the point.

While Johnson was advising Nixon; and Nixon was working with Chennault to delay the Peace Talks; an atmosphere of secrecy and subterfuge became the standard operating procedure in Washington. That attitude led directly to Nixon forming the celebrated “Plumbers Unit” in the White House; ostensibly to stop “leaks.” Left to their own devices they went on to embroil Nixon in the Watergate scandal; something he knew nothing about until after it happened. This was Nixon’s Bay of Pigs. He was blindsided by the same group of people in the same way in which Kennedy’s administration was blindsided by the last minute revelation of the full extent of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

This is a very important book in that it finally ties the Watergate scandal to the things which preceded it. There are many who believe that Nixon was set up by the CIA and Howard Hunt; who were working with some Cuban exiles that were connected to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The real question is why?

Nixon was asking for the CIA files on the Bay of Pigs and even stuff related to Dallas from the moment he took office. Why? He was surrounded by people who all had ties to George Bush; either as an oil tycoon, or later as a politician and head of the CIA. Why? This book doesn't answer these questions, but they are inherently connected. The author has touched only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The name Bush doesn't even appear in the index. 

The author even blames the entire ineffectiveness of the B-52 bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail on Pentagon and Cabinet leaks while completely ignoring the Walker Spy Ring, which cost the U.S. approximately 15-20,000 more battle deaths. It is impossible to discuss the B-52 bombing raids, and their having been compromised, without at least mentioning the Walkers. But that is exactly what the author does.

This book is a very detailed and helpful account of the proposed policy to halt the bombing in Vietnam and how it was used as a campaign issue by both sides in the 1968 election. It even shows how Nixon forged a policy of secrecy and paranoia which would eventually culminate in the Watergate burglary and his eventual departure from the White House.

But the book never really answers the crucial question of how; or even why; Nixon would have allowed this to happen. For a wider scope on the issues raised in this book; particularly the “why” behind the Watergate break in; you can do no better than to read Russ Baker’s 2009 book “Family of Secrets.”

In spite of any shortcomings, this book is still an important one, if only because it goes beyond the basic assumptions of Watergate being the product of an overzealous staff and a paranoid President. Nothing as complicated as Watergate could possibly be that simple.

Lee Harvey Oswald - Midnight News Conference 11-23-1963

There is one thing which has puzzled even many skeptics over the last 50 years concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, and the subsequent killing of the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald. That is why he was paraded; literally; in front of reporters in a hallway, and later on in a conference room at which Jack Ruby was present? At that conference Mr. Ruby even offered a correction to a question about the Fair Play for Cuba movement.

When people are accused of a high profile crime; even back then; they were secluded for two reasons. The first is that you really don’t want the trial to begin de-facto on TV, which raises the possibility of a mistrial later due to a tainted jury pool; and the second reason is that you don’t want some nut job killing the suspect for any reason at all.

In the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, he was paraded 3 times before the news media, and even allowed to give a midnight conference with TV reporters. The full footage of that conference is not on You Tube, so I have used the hallway footage to illustrate my point. Why was this man placed in front of the public at all?

The answer is patently simple. They wanted him dead. Look at who was in charge in Dallas at the time of the President’s murder? The Mayor was Earle Cabell, the brother of Charles Cabell, the CIA director who had been fired after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Every-one else was subservient to this man. At stake was the fate of the Oil Depletion Allowance, which resulted in some very powerful people, all of whom had ties to the Intelligence Community, the Oil Industry and Army Intelligence to actually be involved in the President’s motorcade route when he was killed.

Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin was driving the lead car. Lumpkin was the friend of Jack Crichton, who was a member of the Army Intelligence Reserve Unit. Lt. Colonel George Whitmeyer, who commanded all of the Reserve Units in Texas, was in the car with him. He was not on the approved list of people riding in the motorcade and basically forced his way into it by virtue of his rank.

When the pilot car passed the Book Depository he instructed Mr. Crichton to stop the vehicle so he could relay instructions to the Dallas Policemen who were handling traffic at the corner of Elm and Houston. It is not known what the nature of that conversation was; only that it was conducted by a man with ties to the military and the CIA who should not have even been there at all.

The links go on and on; but the central question will always be why was Oswald paraded before anyone at all in the less than 48 hours he would be in custody before he was murdered by a man known very well to the Dallas Police Department? Remember that when Oswald was shot, one of the detectives handling him cried out, “Jack, you son of a bitch!” That footage will be posted tomorrow.